Wednesday, 31 October 2012

I was reminded of an
ex-colleague the other day – someone for the purposes of this blog I shall
refer to as Doctor No.This was someone
whose arrival at the company for which I was working at the time was heralded in
almost messianic proportions.Not only
had he been working in London (and we were based
in a sleepy Stockport suburb), he was in his
mid-20s and already had a PhD on his CV.

So Doctor No arrived and was
immediately entrusted with looking after some important clients and conducting
some important group discussions.Internally, some of us had our doubts about the Doctor almost
immediately.Openly flirting with
respondents had not been a part of any training manuals we’d read on
qualitative research.

Time passed and concerns over
Doctor No grew as clients began to murmur about potential misgivings over his
behaviour and perhaps more importantly, his intellectual capabilities.

My bosses at the time were
reluctant to hear these negative views being expressed openly about the Doctor,
by staff or by clients alike.This may
have had something to do with the fact that they had originally appointed
Doctor No, agreeing to a high salary (well he had worked in that London) as well as a
large percentage of the first year of the same to the agency from whence he
came.

Concerns and complaints
continued to surround Doctor No, however, and eventually he was summoned for a
final showdown.My then boss confronted
the Doctor with the ever-growing list of misdemeanours to which he had few
answers to offer.And as the tension
rose she finally made the suggestion which had been on everyone else’s lips ever
since he’d arrived.

“You know what” she cried, “I don’t think you’ve even got
a PhD”

The Doctor remained brazen
as ever as he looked my boss in the eye.

“I said I’d started one, I didn’t say I actually had one”
was his eventual retort.

Well, as you might guess,
Doctor No’s stay was cut rather short at that point.The agency was informed that their bill would
not be paid and an agreement was made with the Doctor that if he walked quickly
enough, he might be able to begin a new career elsewhere, preferably in a
different industry.

The Doctor came to my mind
as I reflected on what he might be doing now.

If he has a company website
I’m thinking he might be the sort who’s pretty decent at making sure it remains
pretty high on Google searches.I can
hear him now – ‘let’s say we work in every part of the UK and all over
the world, and let’s make sure we take those key words to the max’.Yes, he did like the odd cliché.

And if he’s on LinkedIn I’m
reckoning that he’s bought himself a few thousand contacts on the internet and
his profile appears on hundreds of other influential people’s profiles day in
and day out.

And I wonder what his actual
profile now contains.Is he still
claiming to be a doctor?Is he still
saying he’s a qualitative researcher?Is
he now saying that his career in the north went swimmingly well?

Truth is these days we all
have more opportunity than ever to big ourselves up.And these days there are plenty of companies
out there ready to encourage us and to
help us do the same.

So where do we draw the
line?And who will be the final arbiter?

The Doctor was
exposed…eventually.But what of all
those other people currently designing their websites, filling in their
LinkedIn profile pages?

To tell it as it is, as we
say at Park Lane Research, or to ‘just add skills’? You decide.

Oh, and if you endorse me
for my skills, I’ll endorse you for yours.Cheers.